A Very Bad Day…the Goodness of Humans and Social Media

Yesterday was one of those days…you know the kind, when shit just goes wrong from the moment you get up, and just keeps getting worse. Then you reach the breaking point and just snap…in my case it’s probably been a good ten years or more since I last snapped, thankfully the only victim was a dining room chair..
I often joke that I am not a morning person, but the truth is I really am not a morning person, so any day that requires me to get up before 7am and to actually be dressed and functioning and at a meeting by 8 am is already a dicey proposition. I arrive at my meeting only to discover that there is no coffee, not only am I up way too damn early, but no coffee? Thankfully the meeting went off without a hitch, and in the end I close a deal I have been working on for months; the little agency I run is getting a new home. We are doubling our space and in the end will only be spending a few dollars more a month and be in a better and safer location!.
So I leave the meeting space and decide to walk and treat myself to breakfast, mind you I am walking because as a one car family, that 8 am meeting time meant the Spousal Unit had to take the car to drop the kid off at school which doesn’t start until 8:30. No biggie, it was a gorgeous morning and hell I need the exercise. I figure I will eat breakfast and ask the man to pick me up since I am not quite sure I want to walk all the way back home. Nice simple plan, right?.
I arrive at my breakfast spot only to be greeted with the unfortunate news that this quirky little bakery that serves a mean plate of over easy eggs and toast is no longer offering egg dishes. What? No eggs? Nope, my choice is baked French toast or a breakfast sandwich. I’ve already walked a bit, it’s been four hours since I got up and I need coffee so I say fine…whatever!!!.
Well I eat my less than satisfactory breakfast, slam down several cups of coffee and the man retrieves me and I head back to my home office to work a few hours before I have to head to work. It’s at this point; the day takes a very very dark turn. Our afternoon schedule is normally the man drops me off at work, and then picks the kid up; well we go out to get in the car only to discover we have a very flat tire. Like flatter than a damn crepe! It’s 2:05, I need to be at the office in 10 minutes or so and the kiddo must be picked up by 2:30. No time to change the tire after all we have a spare in the cargo section that came with the car. So my only option is walking to work, long story short, I make the 1 mile trek uphill from my house to office lugging my heavy ass bag in 15 minutes. Not bad, and hey I got exercise! Besides it’s not like I will have to do this walk in reverse since the man will put the spare on!.
Unfortunately as the afternoon wears on, the man sends me a series of text messages that start to color my mood. It turns out there is a missing piece in the car and he can’t get the spare tire out of the cargo space and also without that piece can’t use the specially designed jack to take off the tire. Calls are made, AAA is contacted and even they inform him that due to the make of our car, they can’t assist either. Our only option so it seems is a new tire, fine whatever…more calls are made and it’s revealed that since we have 4 wheel drive you can’t replace just one tire you need 4 new tires. No one will sell us one fucking tire, it’s all or nothing and a basic set of feet for the car starts at $600+! Oh shit! Thanks to ridding ourselves of over $100,000 in debt recently, we no longer have credit cards, we are mid pay cycle and long story short don’t have a spare $600 or so sitting around..
By this point I am still at work, the center is abuzz with activity and I am slowly losing it, add in a few kids decided that this would be a fine time to act up. Bright side at least I won’t be walking home since one of my staffers has offered to drive me home..
Well I get home and things are just looking grim, the man decides the only way out is placing a call to his Dad aka FIL aka the guy who has bailed us out many times before but hey we haven’t been bailed out in at least a year or two. Now this is where the story gets better, as the man was on the phone with his Dad, I jumped on twitter to blow off steam since I had already destroyed a few items when I got home. One of our local tweeps who is like MacGyver asked a few questions and I answered as did the man and our tweep responds and says hey, I got tools I think I can help out at least to get the spare freed. What? For real?.
I should add that I had met this particular tweep over the summer when he did a small job for us (like I said he is a handy kick-ass dude) both he and his partner are on twitter and both the man and I chat with both of them. They are solid salt of the earth working class folks much like the man and I who struggle to stay sane, stay in love and keep their heads above water. However he and his lady aren’t exactly around the corner, to be honest they are an hour and a half away from us. I mean they have kids, it was almost 7 pm when they said they’d drive down, and my mind was like are they for real?.
Long story short, they were very real, they pulled in to the driveway a little after 9 pm, the men folk got to working while us gals sat and shared some wine and conversation. In the end our tweep did it, he freed the spare; he and the Spousal Unit got it on the truck and wow! I must admit I was more than a bit verklempt, I mean we know each other but we don’t? Or do we? So many times it’s easy to discount the real value of social media, I constantly see folks who downplay the value of being really themselves online yet this year in more than one instance being myself has proven to be beneficial in more ways than one. Here I was sitting and drinking wine with a woman in my house who I never had met yet our conversation flowed and it felt like catching up with an old friend..
I know both the tweeps occasionally read my ramblings here so let me just say, despite the wine and beer shared last night, next meet up first round is on us. Working class solidarity!

Reminds me of my childhood, weekends were often spent helping people out. Friends/Family whatever. Everyone would chip in, the women would usually cook, while the men tinkered. The kids would hang around and wait to be given chores. My brother still does this, goes to his friends house to help them build a deck, put in plumbing, whatever. Not sure if it’s a regional thing, or a rural thing or a Maine thing, but it is an awesome thing.

It crazy but I have found people like that here in Maine. Not to say that it’s not everywhere, I believe it is but there something about here. I think it’s because we all kinda struggle so we bond together in our struggle no matter what.

When people try to discount the validity of online relationships I no longer feel defensive or question my own experience. I just know the person saying “online only doesn’t count” or “isn’t real” just hasn’t had the kinds of experiences I’ve had.